50 and this was fine for the television pro- ducers, and fine for the government, which kept its majority in the Assem- bly, and fine for the nouveaux philo- sophes, who were philosophers main- ly in that they got away with describ- ing themselves that way. This kind of collusion-the state's eXploiting intel- lectuals while intellectuals exploit the institutions of the state-is what De- bray tried to examine in "Le Pouvoir Intellectuel en France." There was something terribly smug about the dé- but of the nouveaux philosophes. It stirred the old national myths about intellectual influence in public life, but the currency of the exchange was not influence at all but celebrity and profit. T HE state is the employer of first and last resort here, and there are actually very few Paris intellectuals who do not work, directly or indirect- ly, for the government. It is a matter not just of state radio and television but also of the lycées and colleges and uni- versities where they have always taught, the ministries and bureaus where they are conseillers d' état. Since Napoleon, the ruling class of France has gIven its sons to the state the way Italians give sons to the Church, and, inasmuch as the French still practice a kind of Napoleonic state capi talism, that "state" means banking and business and industry as much as government. Very little important business is con- ducted here in which the state does not figure as an investor, an underwriter, a banker, or a partner-including the business of information. But there prob- ably could never be a Berufsverbot in F rance, the way there is in parts of Germany-an arrangement that gives government the right to fire anyone whose thinking the people in power at the time consider subversive. The French are fierce about their right to ideology, and their fierceness translates into a so- cial contract, because very few Frenchmen, in the end, will risk that right just for the privilege of censoring a neighbor. It is not really in the interest of the state, any- way, to fuss much about the ideological enthusiasms of its employees. The business of the French state is to preserve and perpetuate its own au- tonomy-which includes see- ing that its in vestments flour- ish It cannot afford to sacri- fice its talent (or its profits) because of famIly squabbles even with a family fortune in African wood to maintain him, had to give up his newspaper, I mprevu, after about three days and an enormous bill from Drouant, which had evidently served Lévy and his staff as a kind of corner cafeteria, sending up champagne and fancy finger sandwiches. As for the others, Daniel Cohn-Bendit spent the last few years working in a Frankfurt bookstore, and some of his old friends say they are going to start a "post- MarxIst" journal, once they have raised the money. Some have dropped out and are farming in the V ar, making cheese in communes on choice Vaucluse prop- erty, preaching Nature now instead of Revolution. The rhetoric is anxious here, and French is a language that encourages this sort of anxiety, this senSe of vast hermeneutical space, like an apartment house or a garage, always waiting to be filled, always changing tenants. Paul Valéry once said, "I l n' y pas une parole qu' on puisse comprendre, sz l' on va au fond." And probably no one but a Frenchman, talking to other French- men, could have said that and been understood.. French makes its points by tone, by pause, by phrasing and syn- tactical play. William Carlos Williams' instruction to American poets-"No ideas but in things"-would sound here like someone imposing debating rules in a grand salon. People in Paris use language to mystify and shine, like a bnght balloon, performing best at its least substantial. And this is just as true when they are discussIng factory conditions and the lumpen proletariat as when they are writing poetry. In fact, in Paris it is often consIdered a mark of intellect to be illisible.. Philippe Sollers's Tel Quel-whIch is subsidized by Éditions du Seuil, sells about six thousand copies, and has taken up Marx, Mao, structuralism, psvcholinguistics, Freud, St. Augustine, Solzhenitsvn, and the Free World, roughly In that order, over the past ten years-is considered the last word in Paris discours, the Yves Saint Laurent of thought, and not really be- cause of the brilliant piece it will sometimes run but be- cause so feV\," people can un- derstand a word in the mag- azine. Tel Quel sets a stan- dard in obscurity.. Occasion- ally, someone of the stature of Foucault will get away wIth clarity-with the kind of prose that suggests a clear that will end, sooner or later, by themselves. The state here is a little like property in a Jane Austen novel: it is meant to survive generations of its custodians and their various atti- tudes. ANDRE MALRAUX once said that I'"\. in France ideas were guests- hôtes de passage, little celebrities in- vited in for a while but rarely allowed to overstay their welcome.. There are not really many ideas here for which people will risk their own security- besides, perhaps, the "idea" of the state and the rather J acobin "idea" of the French Communist Party. Despite the whoops and the feathers, there were no deaths here in May of 1968. The famous évenements were a kind of happening.. They had the energy of a passion play but not a passion.. They were, rather, a poignant moment in France's history-which may be why they are so affectIonately remembered now. May, 1968, did not produce a revolution; it released a generation of fils à papa with the confidence, the contacts, and the money to make their reputations as revolutionaries before the public's interest was exhausted. J ean-Édern Hallier, one of the most agitated of the 1968 gauchistes, mar- ried an heiress and could therefore finance his own newspaper, which he called La Cause du Peuple. From Mao, Hallier was converted to Ecolo- gy, and from Ecology to Breton In- dependence. Just now he is a Pagan, and celebrates his Celtic past with ex- pensive campaigns for the European Parliament and occasionally writes for right-wing journals. Of course, not everyone can keep up like that. Lévy, liB I liB I EiBl' ll orno'l m [][DO I ll1m E1EIIIJi8 ,.. . JUNE 30, 1980